6/2/2023 0 Comments Red Famine by Anne Applebaum![]() ![]() Neither the Ukrainian famine nor the broader Soviet famine were ever officially recognized by the USSR. ![]() Among them were nearly 4 million Ukrainians who died not because of neglect or crop failure, but because they had been deliberately deprived of food. The result was a catastrophe: At least 5 million people perished of hunger all across the Soviet Union. At the same time, a cordon was drawn around the Ukrainian republic to prevent escape. At the height of the crisis, organized teams of policemen and local Party activists, motivated by hunger, fear, and a decade of hateful propaganda, entered peasant households and took everything edible: potatoes, beets, squash, beans, peas, and farm animals. Despite the shortages, the state demanded not just grain, but all available food. It was then exacerbated, in the autumn of 1932, when the Soviet Politburo, the elite leadership of the Soviet Communist Party, took a series of decisions that deepened the famine in the Ukrainian countryside. It began in the chaos of collectivization, when millions of peasants were forced off their land and made to join state farms. In the years 19, a catastrophic famine swept across the Soviet Union. ![]()
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